


salvation (lets their wings unfold)

by 51stCenturyFox



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Cas watches Dean sleep, Destiel - Freeform, Episode Tag, Episode: s09e15 Thinman, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV Castiel, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles, scotch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/pseuds/51stCenturyFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel deals with his new angel charges and makes his way back to the Winchesters.</p><p>--</p><p>"<i>Gank</i> them,” sighs Castiel, forcing patience into his tone. A leader, a teacher, should be patient above all else. “Smite them. End their existence. Send them back to Hell. Since you’re there.”</p><p>“That’s not our-”</p><p>“If you say ‘that’s not our job,’ Jehoel, I’ll have you know that I have changed multiple shockingly full diapers, done weekly inventory for two months, and mopped a prodigious amount of vomit from the floor of a Gas N’ Sip restroom.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	salvation (lets their wings unfold)

It would be wasteful to just ignore all of the useful trappings that once belonged to Bartholomew (though they really belong to Buddy Boyle’s multi-million-dollar televangelist ministry, thus really to donors everywhere who would have been grossly appalled by the excess.)

So naturally, Castiel and the angels who decide to follow him use everything they can get their hands on.

(There are more angels than Cas really knows what to do with, to be honest. More come out of the woodwork after word spreads that Bartholomew is no longer in charge.)

Some of them are put to work in the headquarters building searching for Metatron and Gadreel with the technology available, and others are sent out to follow those leads and track the miscreants, _like hunters do, not like angels, who typically storm in and stab everything in sight_ , Cas thinks, nodding to himself.

He gets a terse call two days later from Jehoel, in Tampa. “We’ve come across a nest of several demons and have trapped them in a nightclub with confining sigils.”

“Well, take care of them,” Castiel says.

“They’re beyond redemption, they’re dem-”

“Yes, I know that. _Gank_ them,” sighs Castiel, forcing patience into his tone. A leader, a teacher, should be patient above all else. “Smite them. End their existence. Send them back to Hell. Since you’re there.”

“That’s not our-”

“If you say ‘that’s not our job,’ Jehoel, I’ll have you know that I have changed multiple horrifying diapers, done weekly inventory for two months, and mopped a prodigious amount of vomit from the floor of a Gas N’ Sip restroom.”

The remit expands to ganking demons and ministering to the hungry on the streets, because it isn’t as if there isn’t enough money to buy warm dinners. Castiel encourages them all, scores now, to volunteer for various tasks, which is met with confusion.

“But what are our assignments?” asks Tzaphqiel, and Castiel tilts his head at her.

“There are things that must be done, but space for...what do you want to do?”

Her eyes widen, and it takes her the remainder of the afternoon to decide that she wants to go on the road in one of the many cars in Buddy’s fleet after someone teaches her how to drive.

*

Cas needs to see the Winchesters. Dean won’t answer his phone and Sam’s replies are vague and noncommittal. It’s a 20-hour trek to Kansas, but when you don’t sleep, that’s not a problem.

To Castiel’s chagrin, two of the angels now in his charge haltingly insist on accompanying him, for someone’s protection. His or theirs; he isn’t exactly sure. They’d fallen to Earth with the rest, but they’d each been in vessels for fewer than two months.

“Bartholomew was misguided in many things, but he was right about banding together,” Nobah says.

“Fine,” says Castiel, opening the door to one of the identical dark blue sedans. “Come on, then.”

They converse in the car; Nobah and Zadkiel share how they came to inhabit their vessels. Nobah’s host is present -- a small-town man who’d prayed in a cowboy church for the angels to “come on in” shortly after his girlfriend had left him for another. Zadkiel’s vessel is now her own; she’d answered the coma prayer of a woman grievously wounded in a bicycle accident. _She’s pretty_ , Castiel thinks to himself, a very un-angelic thought. She looks like she could be the daughter of Uriel’s vessel. “I couldn’t heal her completely; she didn’t make it. But she made me promise to take care of her cats,” Zadkiel explains. “I brought them to the ministry.”

“Everyone likes to attend them, especially the cupids,” Nobah says. “They’re very…” he struggles to find the correct word. “Cuddly?”

Castiel is warmed by the thought that at least some of the angels are keeping their promises. He punches buttons on the dashboard until he finds a satellite radio station called Classic Rewind and a song about a metaphoric fish fills the car. “Grows on you, doesn’t it?” he says, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

His wingless angels exchange a look that says they’re unconvinced.

 _Ooh! Barracuda!_ repeats the voice from the speakers.

*

They stop for gasoline and an oil change (a light is blinking) in Jasper, Indiana, and Castiel ushers his charges into a diner and orders coffee.

“We don’t need…” Nobah says.

“It’s good to get off the road sometimes,” Castiel explains. “Staring at the highway is monotonous.” He’d stared for literal ages at things that were more monotonous, but not by much. “And what else are we to do while the maintenance on the car is being taken care of? Stand in front of the shop? If you want to blend in better among humans, you’ll have to adopt more of their customs.”

Zadkiel wrinkles her nose at the cup in front of her. “It’s bitter,” she whispers, and Castiel pushes the sugar and little cones of creamer closer to her.

“Adjust it to taste,” he advises, as Nobah wraps his hands around the warmth of his mug.

*

Someone steals Zadkiel’s black woolen coat from a hook near the entry. She gripes about it, but Castiel reminds her that someone probably needed the warmth more than she does. Though she isn’t cold, it looks odd to be out and about in the middle of winter in shirtsleeves, so they stop at a department store where she can buy another while Nobah retrieves the sedan.

He steps next door for a few supplies and once back inside, hovers near the socks until Zadkiel approaches, looking flustered. “They don’t have anything like the one my vessel wore. I’m not certain…” She’d chosen the plainest clothes in Kiara’s closet when she’d gone back to retrieve the cats.

“Well, which one do _you_ like the best?” Castiel asks.

She hesitates briefly, and a few minutes later the sales clerk rings up a plum-toned nylon coat that shimmers in the light, along with a soft grey scarf she’s picked out for Nobah to wear. “It’s the same color as his eyes,” she explains. "Could we buy it?"

Castiel stops her outside and unfastens the top button of her shirt, quickly smoothing her collar. “It's better this way, I’m told.”

Nobah blinks at her when he pulls up in the car. “It’s an interesting color, isn’t it?” Castiel asks him, and he nods.

“It looks...good on you, Zadkiel,” Nobah says.

*

Castiel knows the bunker in Lebanon is warded against every seraph in existence except himself, plus he doesn’t want to inflict two fallen angels on the Winchesters at the moment, so he pulls into the parking lot of a hotel and arranges for a room.

“It isn’t as if we have to sleep,” Nobah grumbles once they’re in the room, and Castiel shrugs.

“Consult with your vessel,” he suggests. He wishes he’d done that more often, when Jimmy had been his co-pilot.

“Allan is his name. He desires something…called...onion rings?” Nobah murmurs.

“There’s a Biggerson’s next door,” Castiel says, snapping a credit card down on the table between the beds. “Make sure you tip. I like to leave twenty percent. And if you smell like onion rings later, brush your teeth. Hot showers are good, too.” He indicates the plastic bag he’s brought in from the car full of random toiletries.

Castiel points at the laptops they’ve toted in from the trunk of the sedan. “Do research if you like, and check up on possible sightings. Television is also interesting, sometimes. You’ve watched television, haven’t you?”

He pauses at the open door and raps on the wood, drawing their eyes. “That’s not an order, you know. Do what you like.”

When Castiel departs for the bunker, Zadkiel is already flipping through the channel guide.

*

Sam Winchester is doing research and drinking a beer when Castiel arrives, but he rises to offer a hug that Castiel doesn’t have to be prompted to return, tucking his chin into Sam’s massive shoulder. It’s very pleasant.

“Dean’s holed up in his room,” he says, tucking an errant strand of hair over his ear. “We’re not talking much, really...”

Still? Cas frowns, and frowns again when Sam tells him about Kevin. It’s good news about Mrs. Tran, but the prophet deserves Heaven, along with so many others trapped and lost in the veil.

This cannot stand. He passes two high-limit credit cards from the ministry across the table and fills Sam in on the latest developments on the Metatron front.

“So, you have a… _posse_ now?” Sam grins, and Castiel rolls his eyes before he heads down the hallway.

“Dean?” he says after cracking his bedroom door when a knock gets no result.

“Cas? Is that...yeah, come in,” he hears, and Dean sits up on the bed when he enters, pulling a set of earphones off. "Cas."

Castiel wants to hear _Dean_ talk -- he doesn’t feel like relating his own story yet again, and after the road trip he’s tired of talking anyway -- so he tells Dean that he’s filled Sam in. It’ll force them to speak at some length later, won’t it?

He perches on the edge of the bed, and Dean fiddles with the headphones as they talk. He has a drink, amber-tinted liquid in a heavy glass, and Castiel accepts the offered sip, chasing a droplet lost to the edge of his lip. It sings of peat and aged wood molecules and sharp distillation, but that’s what scotch is supposed to taste like, in a way, so Dean pours him a glass of his own.

He’s moved so his back’s against the headboard, at Dean’s side. He might not want to chat, but Dean certainly does, about the Ghostfacers and something called a pishtaco and Garth’s new life as a werewolf. He assiduously does not mention Sam and their apparent lack of communication, which tells Castiel as much as if he had, just as Dean’s voice slipping into a slur tells him that his friend is both tired and one or two drinks over the line.

“When is the last time you slept, Dean?” he asks.

“Don’ remember.”

Dean reaches over him to put the bottle back on the bedside table (that wasn’t there before, Castiel is fairly sure) when he has to take the glass receptacle from Dean’s fingers and slide it away from the edge. Dean lets his arm drop across Castiel’s waist as he lets out a gusty sigh.

He calls himself poison, but Castiel can still see into Dean’s soul. It seems different, with this stolen grace, darker perhaps, but it’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever known.

Castiel should move, slip the pillow under his shoulders beneath Dean’s head and relinquish his spot on the bed, but he just can’t do it. He doesn’t want to wake Dean, and...he doesn’t want to spend more time apart from him, either. He shifts back carefully, settling back on the pillow, and Dean nestles into his shoulder.

Cas lets his hand rest over the curve of Dean’s wrist, breathes in his fine, unique scent present beneath the haze of liquor, and watches him sleep. Dean has a nightmare hours in, and stolen grace allows Castiel to slip two fingers across the pained lines of his forehead and wipe it away, pushing him into a deeper sleep -- something he obviously needs.

If Castiel touches his lips gently to Dean’s hairline just after that, that’s his business.

*

Dean’s up late, raising his head and blinking at him like he’s an apparition. “Cas?”

He nods, and Dean pulls his arm away, backs over to his own side of the bed. “Personal space,” he grumbles. “What do I always tell you?”

Castiel launches an internal struggle not to argue that Dean is the one with the octopus arms and a related struggle not to smile, but he fails at the latter. This battle isn’t important, so he allows his face do what it likes as he tugs Dean back against him. Dean goes without a struggle, huffing softly into his neck. “Dammit, Cas.”

"You just...just...shut your cakehole," Castiel scolds him softly to an answering snort and the curve of Dean's mouth against his collarbone. "And rest."

 

He’ll let Dean pretend Castiel is the only one who likes this for a while longer.

*

At the Holiday Inn Express, Nobah’s hair is mussed, along with only one of the beds.

“It looks as if you slept, after all,” Castiel notes, and Nobah nods once as Zadkiel catches his eye and hides a smile of her own.


End file.
